The good news: you’re the project scientist for the Rosetta mission, which appears to has landed a robot probe on a comet. The bad news: the attendant publicity brings some embarrassing revelations from family members.
Such is the fate of Matt Taylor, the British scientist who is a key part of the Rosetta team. As he was toasting the probe’s success – albeit amid remaining concerns about its location and future – his sister, Maxine, told London’s Evening Standard newspaper that the heavily tattooed Taylor, in the tradition of absent-minded scientists, could be “useless” in everyday life.
She told the paper: “He gets so involved in everything that sometimes common sense goes out of the window – like losing the car in the car park, silly things. If you go out with him, you end up going round and round looking for a car parking space. He doesn’t like making decisions.”
